never gets old

is this it?

life.

i'd like to shrug

i spent nearly all last january-may reading ayn rand's 'atlas shrugged'. don't get me wrong, the book is a beast, it would have taken anyone 4 months to read it; but i read every word of it, trying to fully understand the complexity of what rand was trying to say - and what she really meant. i had read 'anthem' almost a year before, it really got the brain going, thinking about a world where people were not awarded based on the their minds but based on what whoever was in charge thought was a good fit. i next read 'the fountainhead', along with every single architect alive, and i began to think about conviction and standing one's ground even if it meant not getting properly awarded for your work and being ignored because you had failed to think inside the box that was nothing more than smoke + mirrors. 'atlas' added to this thinking. what gives someone else the right to take what they have not earned from someone else? this is where i begin to be spilt. i am not wealthy, in fact i am by most standards buying time before i am poor, so it becomes difficult to think that it's ok for people to make endless amounts of money and then not give back to the process that helped them do so. in my working life i have helped bring in money for my bosses. i have waited tables, smiled at customers and told them the large OJ was totally worth the 5 bucks.. and in fact it was, because my boss did not produce shit, he produced top notch, high quality, products. i made him money because he gave me the ability to be honest about his products and in turn i was able to sell them based on facts.. are you following me here, even a little?

now with this all in mind, think about our current economy.. it's barely hanging on and people are quick to say 'we must provide an atmosphere that enables 'job creators' to work their magic' and then there are people who are saying that those 'job creators' aren't paying their fair share - and in fact BOTH sides are right... and both VERY wrong.

i am not a economist, nor do i pretend to be, and my words are my opinion, and some times the opinion isn't all at informed... so bare with me while i expose my thoughts

many people out there say ayn rand is a quack.. and maybe she was... but they say this because they believe her 'characters' lack human emotion, which is incorrect. her characters always fall in love so if you're gonna say they're emotionless cold-hearted people, you might want to look up some of those words in a dictionary (i don't care which one, you pick). second, her characters are workers, hard fucking workers that feel pain and sadness but do not let this stop their work, they turn it into fuel (yah, yah, i'm disobeying the law of thermodynamics but you know what i'm trying to say!) and use their minds to accomplish tasks. none of her characters had ever finished college and yet turned out to be successful because they worked hard.. not because they knew the right people but because they produced products that were needed and high quality.. these products were not meant to fall apart so producers could simply produce more of the same shit.. no, they were created to be the best, satisfy the need in the market and then something else would have to be invested/created/produced.  summary: people's work matters, and who you know should only be secondary, if at all.

i don't want to rant about this, i honestly think people just need to read 'atlas shrugged', and read it OBJECTIVELY, before you go around bashing or supporting ayn rand. she was an absolute supporter of capitalism, real laissez-fair 'let them work', capitalism... but she also did not believe in absolutes... and furthermore, she was a libertarian, not a 'conservative' as it is known by today's standards. she was an atheist, who had emotions, but believed they did not belong in the work place. can you separate the two?

i am not here to say ayn rand is right but i am also not about to say she is wrong. we cannot wrap our heads around her philosophy because we do not live in a world that could support this type of economic system. we do not pay the true worth of anything and rand would require that we did. there are no such things as subsidies, there are no regulations... and there is NO invisible hand. she was not a neoclassical economists. if people truly want to use ayn rand's words then you have to know she wouldn't let deforestation happen because the market value of a tree's worth would be measured, clean water would be measured. Are you still following me? everything would have an economic value, a true value. we wouldn't be producing, digging, scheming for oil because it wouldn't be cost effective to do so.. not in a regulation-less market place and we also wouldn't have subsidies or hand-outs.. this part is always left out of the conversation.

one last thing.. we need 'job producers', the last thing we want is a 'moratorium on the brains'... but we cannot pick which parts of ayn rand's philosophy we support. there would be no income tax because that is taxing what someone has produced (same thing goes for why property taxes are bullshit, it punishes someone for maintaining their home.. how about a land tax that punishes you for speculation and allowing a piece of land to stay undeveloped? that's pretty fucking wasteful.. and by undeveloped i don't mean we should BUILD on every piece of land but a park/open-space is development, it's creating a productive landscape - but that's a different topic). so yeah, back to taxes, either we don't have them and we find a new way to pay for services.. i.e. if everyone is paying the true price for goods this is possible, yah? and if people are paid wages that are representative of the work they do, most people would receive a livable wage... - or we have taxes that are fair and accomplish something.

but this misses the point that there are way too many externalities at play. people have disabilities, people get sick, PEOPLE ARE GREEDY NON-SELF REGULATING SELF-CENTERED CREATURES... and this is why ayn rand's philosophy is lost on us.. if people can't keep themselves in check this economic system will not work... and we're seeing this now. our economy is the result of picking-and-choosing different philosophies and putting them in a blender and calling it a day (amongst other things, of course). we have no convictions, we're just moving through the system, looking to fill our wallets.

this became a much longer post than i had intended... and it's not very thought out, which isn't fair for anyone who is reading this.. but it is what it is. maybe you agree, maybe now you're pissed off.. whatever, at least now you're thinking.  there's a lot wrong with our system but there's hope and there are good people out there who respect the world and its resources and their employees, and those are the type of job creators we need.. people like you and me... people with brains.. and hearts.

angus stone, i love you

the very best

one of these mornings

subtly perfect

i don't mind

exactly what i needed

cities and nature.. can they co-exists?

"the belief that the city is an entity apart from nature and even antithetical to it has dominated the way in which the city is perceived and continues to affect how it is built. this attitude has aggravated and even created many of the city's environmental problems" - anne whiston spirn

"we must learn the joy of working on the solution - not to be consumed by despair over the immensity of the task - but enriched by the steps to be taken - one at a time" - robert thayer

natural systems

"we might assume that a nature preserve represents the absence of human influence when in fact the existence of intact remnants of indigenous ecosystems depends upon human protection and managements" - joan inverson nassauer

The BlueBelt Project, Staten Island.
use of natural systems to manage stormwater - a very human effort

adore

post-moderism yet again

"post-modernism preoccupation with simulation, fantasy, irony, contradiction, vague historical reference, boundary warping, and lack of guiding principles will not last long, simply because 'postmodern' style attempts to 'deconstruct' or make a mockery of all former, form-giving influence and assumptions. It has given up seeking an underlying 'truth'. I argue, however, that an underlying truth is rapidly revealing itself to us in the birth of the notion of sustainability, however 'trendy' the world has become. A need to put flesh [in the form of physical landscapes] on the skeletal philosophy of sustainability has become too powerful to resist" - Robert Thayer, Gray World, Green Heat 1994.

watch the world spinning waves... like some machine

i'm screwed worse than new york's shoreline

a month and a half into thesis and i'm fresh out of a topic. my plan for a feral landscape in the gowanus is basically what dlandstudios (landscape arch firm based in brooklyn) is proposing. this really couldn't happen at a worse time because the semester sure as hell isn't about to get any easier.
sure there's plenty to write about with respect to stormwater management via green infrastructure it's just too bad most of it's been written by engineers, scientists, and landscape architects. i've got nothing. i've tried thinking about how i could investigate nyc's seriousness in the various efforts to use green infrastructure but i know the answer, the city doesn't have money so how could is possibly do more than it already is? i've thought about proposing an alternative plan for the gowanus neighborhood in opposition to that ridiculous decision made by the city planning department to add more housing in a flood plain, i just can't figure out how to go about this.. but i've gotta do something, my first assignment is due in a little less than 48hrs and guess what i haven't even started. this is not like me and it really sucks. i wish SO badly that i was allowed to create a thesis that is more playful, allowing the master to look beyond the rigid structure that is planning policy and start to think about the possibilities that could be achieved if people just tried something new every once in a while. also it may have been a better idea not to go to school in new york where some 'powerful' people have a sickening love affair with capitalism and all things greed.. more so it would have been wise to go to school for philosophy and focus on ecological transformation and what that means for humans and their life, especially those living through it - now. but alas, here i sit, damning myself for lack of creativity and possibly knowledge, intelligence, and all things necessary to write a successful thesis that means something to me. jeez, i'm fucked.

rough day

i've clearly got a thing for 'two door cinema club'

many surprises await you!

productive meeting

week 4, check out some books.
meet with advisor to make sure your topic is 'legit' <-- this went extremely well and now i have a grasp on how to tackle my thesis in a way that will matter to me.. and maybe to others.

overview:
- other codes/ordinances/policies are just fine.. explain them; bring together a nice tool box of ideas.. but go on to justify why they are not going far enough.. and why feral is the route that should be further investigated by cities of the future and neighborhoods at risk.
- why is stormwater management to this degree necessary..
- develop a plan, how might these feral/resilient landscapes be integrated into existing conditions... DRAW this.
- what have other people called 'feral'.. and what do you mean when you say 'feral' in an ecological sense?
    - invasive v. native
    - LID ---> low cost?
- use other examples to explain your case, and once again, develop this theory of feral and how it fits into your location
"there must be a preeminent emphasis upon preserving the feral landscape of the Alaska wilderness"


etc. etc. etc. stay tuned. 

so Liechtenstein's got some coin to spend

gross national income per capita, the US is 18th in the world,
behind all scandinavian nations, switzerland,  the netherlands, and finland.
Monaco was number 1, with just under 200k, followed by Liechtenstein.

however, the US ain't doing so bad with its purchasing power..
and norway's capital, oslo is one of the most expensive cities in europe,
so really only norwegians can afford to kick it there...
but don't forget, we pay for everything here, especially higher education,
the other nations, not so much.